An ongoing review of politics and culture

“It is only in the United States that a penniless survivor of the Holocaust and a fighter in the anti-Nazi underground could have received an education, raised a family and had the privilege of serving the last three decades of his life as a member of Congress. I will never be able to express fully my profoundly felt gratitude to this great country.” — Representative Tom Lantos, dead today at the age of 80. Baruch dayan emet.

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Do you think that being able to serve in the US Congress has a teensy bit to do with actually being in the US, and that, ipso facto, it is not possible to do the same if you aren’t in the US? As such, while the third part of the encomium is tautological, the first two parts are boilerplate American parochial nonsense of the sort that make people in other countries cringe (couldn’t have been educated or raised a family in Canada, eh?). Blech.

Exactly right, Rousseau. I’m a Norwegian, and this is the kind of stuff that will consistently induce all kinds of displeasure. It’s one thing to call the Giants world champions, it’s entirely another to pose these kinds of flat out lies, insulting the whole of the civilized world in the process (what, we don’t look favorably upon Holocaust-survivors?). And on top of that – even more tellingly and disappointingly – have it postured by every media outlet in the country as if it were his proudest utterances, and an affirmation of the potency of the United States.